The most telling number of the impending peak period of the pandemic locally is current hospitalizations which rose by six to 85. Nine more people were hospitalized in total bringing the number of people who have ever spent time in a hospital to 290.

The novel coronavirus sadly claimed the lives of four more South Dakotans, all of whom were from Minnehaha County.

Of those 60 new cases, barely half of them were from Minnehaha County, which has seen its share of the daily cases slowly decline as cases in other counties have started to rise. 48 more people also recovered from the virus bringing the county total to 1,940.

Brown County has seen its numbers steadily increase the most of any other county lately. They reported 11 new cases to bring their total to 154.

After many weeks of very few cases reported, Pennington County has seen its number of cases more than double in the last seven days to 40.